Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

Chapter 3. The Men in My Life
are we there yet? testimonial literature 323
When I was thirteen the parents of several young men started asking my
mother for my hand in marriage. I was supposed to marry Alfonso but that
never worked out. He was a young man who came to live with his father in
the village. I wasn’t a woman yet but it was a custom for young girls to marry
at a very young age, even before they had their fi rst period. Most men were
older when they married for the fi rst time, but they expected their women
to be younger and without any experiences. Men are strange that way. They
want their wives to be pure, but then they do the same things to their young
wives as they do to older women with whom they have had experiences. I really
think the only reason a man wants his young wife to be a virgin, pure, is
so that he knows that the baby is his. There is never a question in a woman’s
mind; she knows that the baby is hers. But a man has no way of knowing
for sure. If the wife is a virgin and gets pregnant the fi rst time, then there is
no question about who the father is. Some men get impatient when it takes
months and months for their wives to get pregnant. The longer it takes,
some men think, the more chance there is that their women could have
relations with other men. A Mexican man doesn’t trust other men because
he knows that they are all trying to seduce as many women as possible. And,
each one of those women has to belong to someone else [. . .].
It is very important for a mother to set a good example. It’s her duty to
love her children and want to keep them from harm.—Celsa
How can you be responsible if you are always drunk or if you show your
children that the bottle is one of the ways to solve your problems. You can
excuse drinking in men but not in women.
Children take a much closer look at their mothers than they do their
fathers.—Celsa
[. . .] In the past you heard a lot of talk about the farmer but rarely anything
about the farmer’s wife. When there was work to be done in the campo,
however, women were always there giving their husbands the support they
need to get it done. Now government agencies are actually aiming programs
at the womenfolk. They want us to learn some new techniques designed
to improve the quality and nutrition of the food we eat. The two projects
of soybean sprouts and pedigree sows have been designed as work for the
women.